L'Agent Double

by Kit Sergeant

  Non’s eyes grew wide as she gazed at her mother’s finery. She reached out to touch the fur lining on M’greet’s coat, but Rudy brushed her arm away.

  “You’re looking… well.” He had spat out the last word, as if it pained him to say it.

  She glanced at him disdainfully, telling him she felt just the opposite about him with her eyes. She turned to her daughter and swept her into her arms. “Oh, Non, my baby girl. How would you like to visit Mammie in Paris?”

  “That’s not possible,” Rudy replied.

  “Oh, but she would love it.”

  Non’s enthusiastic nod showed she agreed.

  “What she would love is to have school supplies.” He put his hand on M’greet’s arm to pull her to the side and tell her in a gruff voice, “We are in a little bit of a financial problem.”

  “Of course.” She shrugged off his arm; his grip and rough manner reminded her all too well of their terrible marriage. She then pulled out a wad of bills and counted them aloud before handing them to Rudy. Catching sight of her daughter’s dirty face, she wet her thumb and swiped at Non’s cheek. Non smiled up at her and M’greet pulled the rest of the money out of her purse. “Make sure you buy her a new dress,” she told Rudy.

  He had nodded and led Non away.

  Throughout the years that had passed since, M’greet had often become melancholy when she thought of Non. How could she grow up a proper lady without a mother? But Rudy had always refused her visitation, though he never returned any of the money M’greet sent.

  Now M’greet agreed enthusiastically to a visit, writing to Rudy, this time in Dutch, that she’d like to discuss the possibility of contributing to Non’s secondary education. She wondered what her daughter looked like, if what Anna had said was true and her hair had darkened since she saw her last.

  Rudy answered that if M’greet wanted to help with money, she should send five thousand florins for Non to take voice and piano lessons. He ended the letter stating that he had not received his pension that month and would not be able to meet in Rotterdam after all.

  “Is something wrong, madame?” Anna asked, entering the room with a basket full of M’greet’s stockings.

  “It’s Rudy.” She wiped at a tear that was threatening to fall. “It’s always the same with him. He tells people that he doesn’t want any of my ‘dirty cash’ but at the same time insists I contribute something to Non.” She clenched her fists. “But he won’t let me see her. How can he deny me that, me, her loving mother?” M’greet finally broke down and wept openly.

  Anna, unaccustomed to such a display of weakness from her mistress, seemed unsure what to do. She set down the basket and sat beside M’greet. “Madame, how is it that he can make such demands of you?”

  M’greet focused her red eyes at a spot on the wall and shook her head. She’d spent most of her adult life spinning fantasies—it helped her escape from the fact that she was a penniless divorcé forbidden to see her daughter. Now she cried for the reality that was her existence, soaking her servant’s blouse with makeup stained tears.

  M’greet cleaned up in time to accompany van der Schalk to a dinner party hosted by Lady Hendriks, one of Amsterdam’s most distinguished women. The guest of honor that night was the Baron Willem van der Capellen.

  “Ah, the beautiful Margaretha MacLeod,” the Baron said, kissing her ring. His lips lingered a bit too long on M’greet’s hand as evidenced by the tsk-tsking emulating from his wife, a stick-figured woman with a pinched face and graying hair. The Baron himself was about fifteen years older than M’greet, and for a moment she was drawn back to those horrifying days after she’d returned on an errand to find that Rudy had left, absconding with everything in their little apartment, including Non.

  She had met the Baron on the street one day soon after that. He approached her at a flower stall, and she asked him back to the small apartment she’d rented. She’d slept with him that first afternoon, and many afternoons after that. In return, the Baron paid her rent and bought her some clothes to replace the ones that Rudy had stolen.

  Over dinner that night at Lady Hendrik’s, the Baron mentioned he’d seen M’greet dance once. “I couldn’t believe the little Margaretha MacLeod that I knew had become the famous Mata Hari.” His wife’s face seemed to become even tighter, her lips forming a hard line.

  “Mata Hari?” van der Schalk coughed down the food he’d been chewing before turning to M’greet. “I thought you were Russian.”

  The Baron laughed heartily before hitting his heavy fist on the tablecloth. “Russian. That’s rich. That’s really rich.” He gave M’greet a glance of appreciation before wiping his eyes with his napkin. “Russian,” he repeated.

  Lady Hendriks, evidently believing such conversation was not to be had at the dinner table, changed the subject to talk of the front. M’greet tuned out as she always did when the war was brought up.

  After the second course, M’greet excused herself to go to the balcony for a smoke. She’d just lit her cigarette when she heard the door slide open.

  “Mind if I join you?” the Baron asked.

  “Are you not still married?”

  He threw his head back and let out that same belly laugh from before. “Are you not still a courtesan?”

  “Hush,” M’greet said, looking around the empty balcony. While paid women were perfectly acceptable in Paris, it was still looked down upon in sanctimonious Holland. “I don’t need to do that anymore. As you said, I am the famous Mata Hari.”

  “Then what are you doing with van der Schalk? And why did you tell him you were Russian?”

  M’greet tipped ash from her cigarette onto the lawn before glancing inside at her latest lover, who was still seated at the table. He met her eyes, and she could tell by the barely concealed hatred on his face that their tryst was over.

  It was no matter, M’greet decided. The Baron would keep her just as well. She took a step closer to him. “Are you staying in Amsterdam for long?”

  “No. Holland has mobilized her forces against the possibility of a German attack. I must report to the border.”

  She angled herself so that no one inside could see her put her hand over his. “How will I see you?”

  The Baron, pleased as pie to have her attention again, beamed. “I’ll think of something.”

  The Baron’s solution was to buy her a house in The Hague, at 16 Nieuwe Uitleg, facing a canal. The house was a charming three-story brick building, decorated with a quaint, old-fashioned air, which M’greet immediately decided would never do. She was able to find a Dutch contractor with Parisian taste, and, using the Baron’s money, commissioned an entire redo of the house’s décor, including putting in a bathroom with running water.

  In the meantime, M’greet took a room at the Paulez Hotel. At the Baron’s urging, she called Paris and requested to speak to her lawyer, Edouard Clunet.

  “Margaretha?” Clunet asked when he got on the line. “What’s your ex-husband done now?”

  She filled him in on Rudy’s latest antics. When she’d finished, he told her, “We’ve been through this before.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Monsieur MacLeod has maintained—”

  “Lies. They are nothing but lies.”

  Clunet knew they weren’t. “I’m sorry, Margaretha.”

  Her voice rose as tears threatened to fall again. “Are you saying I have no recourse? That I can’t see my daughter because he says so?”

  Clunet was silent for a moment and M’greet imagined him biting his fingernails the way he always did he when he was thinking. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but...” she heard a drawer open, “she’s in The Hague.”

  M’greet grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the address he dictated. “She’s attending school to become a teacher.”

  She set the pen down with shaking hands. “I went to school to become a teacher once.”

  Clunet’s voice softened. “I didn’t know that.”

 
“I got kicked out for attempting to seduce the headmaster.”

  He cleared his throat.

  She supposed he wasn’t used to hearing women talk of such things, even after all those months they’d spent time together when Rudy had filed for divorce, claiming—falsely—that M’greet had committed adultery. Back then she’d been on her best behavior, trying to pretend she was more than the nearly naked woman in the picture Rudy had sent to Clunet. The lawyer had told her that any Dutch judge would have agreed with Rudy that his ex-wife was a depraved woman.

  “Anyway, thank you for telling me.” She pressed the address to her heart.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Without thinking, M’greet stepped outside to hail a cab, giving the driver the address on the paper. She had no idea what she would do when she got to the school. She feared that her daughter, who’d been forced to grow up without a mother, would be taken advantage of the way M’greet had.

  M’greet was just an innocent teenager when Wybrandus Haanstra, the headmaster at her teacher-training school, had asked her to stay after class one day. He’d forced himself upon her, his bristly mustache chafing her face, his drool running down her school uniform. M’greet had tried to push him off, but he was far too heavy. He’d forced her to touch him and kiss him down there. Although he never entered her—even Rudy, who had invented many falsehoods against her, had never accused her of not being a virgin when they married—it was enough to get her expelled.

  She’d seen Headmaster Haanstra as a sort of substitute father figure, and, like her real father, he had betrayed her. No one ever accused Haanstra of having corrupt morals: he kept his job at the school and was probably doing the same thing to some other girl. M’greet never wanted Non to experience such heartbreak. It was enough that she’d barely survived the mysterious illness that killed her brother.

  “Slow down,” she commanded the driver as they approached the school. Classes must have just let out as there were dozens of girls in maroon uniforms milling about the grounds. “That’s her,” M’greet said aloud as she spied a tall girl with long black hair. “That’s my daughter.”

  M’greet pulled down the brim of her hat when Non laughed at something her companion said. She did resemble her mother, more so than even M’greet would have predicted, but there was a light-heartedness about her spirit. Non had something that she herself had lost a long time ago, or perhaps, with her tumultuous upbringing, she’d never had. Innocence. M’greet would never willingly take that away from her, no matter how much she longed to envelop her in a never-ending embrace. And, despite whatever lies Rudy had told her, that innocence would be shattered as soon as Mata Hari stepped out from the car and approached her daughter.

  “That’s enough,” she told the driver. “Let’s go.”

  She had the driver drop her off at the hotel in time to meet with her house decorator, Jan Dekker.

  “Ah, madame, you will be so pleased with these newest plans,” Dekker stated. He unrolled a long piece of paper that had been colored in with pencil.

  “Is that lavender?” M’greet asked, her lip curling upward.

  “Yes, as we had discussed, the main room will be a light purple.”

  M’greet sat back and crossed her arms. “I thought we agreed on pink. I want everything in shades of pink.”

  “But madame,” Dekker had a confused look on his face. “You said…”

  “You heard me wrong.” M’greet tapped her finger on the plans and repeated very slowly, “Pink. Everything pink.”

  “Yes, madame,” Dekker said, rolling up the plans again.

  Chapter 8

  Marthe

  October 1915

  After the meeting with Lucelle, several weeks passed and Marthe nearly forgot about her aunt’s promise to make contact. She was just leaving the house on her way to the hospital one morning when she saw Canteen Ma, her wild gray hair dancing in the wind, humming to herself as she pushed her loaded cart up the street. The old lady was a favorite of the German soldiers because she had fresh fruit and vegetables for sale a few days a week.

  “Good day, mademoiselle,” she called to Marthe in a raspy voice. “What a beautiful morning to be out so early.” She approached with a basket. “How about some nice beans, mademoiselle? For you, I give a special price.”

  She came up onto the porch and was so close that Marthe could see her cheekbones through her translucent skin.

  Marthe was about to refuse when Canteen Ma shoved something into her hand. “Only look at that when you are alone,” the old lady said in an uncharacteristically lucid tone before she resumed humming. As soon as Canteen Ma moved on to another house, Marthe ran upstairs to her room and unfolded the note.

  Come to the second farm on the right-hand side of the road to Zwevezeele at nine tonight. Ask for Marie.

  Marthe sat on the bed, her heart sinking. There was no way she’d be able to be on the streets at nine—the Berlin Vampires would be out in force and there would be nothing to explain a woman’s presence outside so late at night.

  “Marthe, aren’t you going to be late for work?” Mother called from downstairs.

  With that, Marthe had an idea.

  When she got to the hospital, the first thing she did was find the Oberarzt. “Herr Oberarzt, now that I have been working here for some time, do you not think it necessary for me to be available for emergencies?”

  The Oberarzt mulled this over. “Yes, I suppose I can write you a pass to come to the hospital if we need you at night.”

  “Thank you, mein herr.”

  She headed into the little room to check on Nicholas Hoot, only to find it empty. She ran into the hall and accosted the first orderly she came upon. “What happened to the two men who had been in that room?”

  He scratched at his scraggly beard. “Weren’t they Allies? They probably got moved to a prison hospital.”

  “But they were injured. You can’t mean they just up and transferred them in the middle of the night.”

  He shrugged. “Then maybe they were shot.”

  Marthe frowned but didn’t want to make a scene. She was still the lone Belgian woman amongst a sea of German men. She took one last look at Nicholas’s empty bed, determined to learn of his fate for Meneer and Mevrouw Hoot’s sake.

  The day passed slowly, as did most in the hospital. There had not been much fighting nearby in the past week; the patients were therefore really only suffering from minor pains, such as earaches and blisters on their feet.

  Marthe left the house at eight that night, giving her a full hour to get to her destination. She made her way through the same fields Lucelle must have used, the Oberarzt’s hastily scrawled pass clutched in her sweaty palm. The ground was hard with early fall frost so her feet thankfully did not sink into the mud. Her heart was in her throat at the thought of the Berlin Vampires coming upon her. She intended to state that she was on her way to visit a sick patient should she encounter the gendarmes.

  Marthe found the road and counted the farms with her finger, deciding that the red-roofed home must have been the farm referred to in the note. If it were possible, her heartbeat sped up even more as she knocked on the door. Perhaps it was a trap.

  The door creaked and a gruff voice demanded, “What do you want?”

  “I have come to see Marie,” Marthe replied, wiping her hands on her skirts.

  The voice gave a grunt and the door opened wider. She stepped inside to the dark hallway. A cool hand took her hot one and led her up the stairs to the back of the house before pushing her into a room illuminated only by a small fireplace.

  “Thank you, Pierre,” Marthe heard her aunt say. “Give me a warning if you hear anything suspicious.” Lucelle sat in a high-backed chair facing the fire, but turned as Pierre shut the door. “I rejoice to see you, my child.” She motioned for Marthe to come closer. “The British Intelligence Service has accepted my proposal. They have given you the code name ‘Laura.’”

  Marthe’s tone was awed. “
Thank you, Aunt.”

  Lucelle shook her head. “I’m not sure you should be grateful to me, but hopefully someday the Allies will feel the same way toward you. Spying is dangerous work and your mission at all times will be to avoid detection. You will therefore send all your messages in code. Your first task will be to memorize the key for this code so thoroughly you will never make a mistake. As soon as you have committed it to memory, you will destroy the formula.” She handed Marthe a small piece of paper. “As I’m sure you well know, the sooner you burn this, the better.”

  Marthe began to stuff the message into the top of her stocking while Lucelle chuckled to herself.

  “That is not a very clever place to hide such a damning piece of evidence—it’s the first place anyone searching you would look.”

  Marthe cast a helpless look at her aunt, who tapped her bun. Marthe followed by tucking the paper in her hair under a pin while Lucelle continued. “You will receive your instructions through the old woman known as Canteen Ma. When you have a message to send, you will code it and then go down the Rue de la Place to reach the Grand Place. On the right you will see an alleyway. Stop at the fifth window on the left-hand side and tap three times, pause, and then two more times. Agent 63 will then take your message to be transmitted to the British Intelligence Service.”

  Marthe’s head was spinning and she spoke slowly. “Fifth window, Grand Place, knock three times, pause, then two more. Agent 63.”

  Lucelle nodded approvingly. “It will be your duty to report any military information you overhear, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you. Whenever you have something to transmit, you must take it to Agent 63 immediately. Do not try to conceal it in the house until a more auspicious time. That puts everyone in danger.”

  “Yes, Aunt, I understand.”

  “In a few days’ time, a man will call at the house and ask for you. He will show you two safety pins on his lapel. These ‘safety-pin men’ are an active branch of an anti-German espionage system and you must persuade your hostess to give the man lodging.”